Independent News & Media sells off South Africa portfolio for $227 million

The Irish media company, Independent News & Media PLC, has sold off its newspaper group in South Africa for $227 million.

In a statement released on Sunday the Dublin company said it had sold its South African subsidiary to Sekunjalo Holdings.

Independent News & Media’s South Africa portfolio includes the Johannesburg-based The Star newspaper, which has a daily circulation of 105,000 copies. It also includes The Pretoria News and the Cape Times and the Cape Argus, as well as weekly newspapers. The sale comes as newspaper circulation is dropping in South Africa.

Sekunjalo Holdings is led by executive chairman Iqbal Surve, a doctor who once gave medical aid to political prisoners released from Robben Island at the end of the apartheid era.

“We are in the final stages of this deal,” Surve, chairman of Sekunjalo Group, told Bloomberg.